Wednesday, 25 July 2012

I’ve been a fan of the character Molly
Squidgepidge and her background story since getting into the Malifaux game and
since finishing painting her in March I’ve managed to include her in quite a
few games, mainly used in conjunction with Seamus, but on a number of occasions
I have tried her leading a crew.

She was heavily included in my crew
choice during the recent BotCH (Battle of the Chumps) Tournament at Maelstrom,
in which I think I included her in all but one game (which was shared
Slaughter).

Now I don’t want to say anything too
negative about using Molly as a leader as I’m a relatively new player, although
from talking to people and reading plenty of forum posts etc it is fairly
evident and generally acknowledged that Molly is considered to be an
underperformer when it comes to leading crews and I’m pretty sure even the game
developers are well aware of this, being that Wyrd are soon going to be
releasing ‘at least one and maybe more’ story encounter packs, with the
inclusion of some new minions for Molly.

Now it was quite a pleasure to read on
Twitter/Forums and hear on the Malifools podcast (http://www.malifools.com/) that Jon Mickleburgh (@jdmickleburgh on twitter) was going
to endeavour on his own #Molly2012 crusade. I’ve even accepted Jon’s ‘Molly
only’ challenge for this year’s grand tournament.

With that in mind I’m going to increase
the frequency of my own Molly lead games and have agreed to share my thoughts
and findings with Jon.

Molly 2012 Part 1 (Reviewing Molly’s
card, interactions with available crew and my experience so far).

Without covering too much ground that’s
already been covered, Molly can only Hire Horrors, Belles and Totems and is
Henchman 5. Currently this means she fairly restricted in Crew build to just a
few minions, with the only option for high damage output being the ‘Rogue
Necromancy’ which is the classic paper tiger model and it’s also worth noting
that unlike Nicodem and Mcmourning, Molly does not have the option of summoning
the ‘Rogue Necromancy’ in game! However Molly can summon (for 2 corpse
counters!) Horrors, Belles and Necrotic Machines with base size of 30mm only,
which does allow her to summon ‘Madam Sybelle’

Molly herself is fairly hard to actually
damage and kill, with the opponent having to first pass a ‘Pitiful’ WP duel
when targeting her and then get past her ‘hard to wound 1’ a potential trigger
on her df which can negate all damage, followed by the ‘slow to die’ and ‘use
soulstone’ combination. With 10 wounds the only let down on her survivability
is the actual defense stat which is just df4. She also has a trigger on her WP
which deals 2 wounds to anyone losing a WP duel with Molly as the defender,
which acts as a very good deterrent for enemies with low WP and wounds.

Now her abilities certainly seem to have
plenty of potential, however I have found that the vast majority of them can
easily become redundant against crews that do not contain ‘living’ models or
have ‘immune to influence’! If your opponent puts an Hoffman crew on the table
then Molly’s going to end up doing very little in the game.

Instead of giving a breakdown of each of
Molly’s spells and abilities which can be read about in plenty of other places
(including the pull my finger wiki) I’m just going to list them in no
particular order and give my quick thoughts on them.

·Henchman 5 – Could really do with being higher (at least 7), especially
has she’s more likely to want the ‘Rogue Necromancy’ in her crew, with no
option to summon it, It would also increase her possible Soulstone cache which
would help when it comes to making sure those key spells happen.

·Instinctual +1 (0) action – Good but I can’t help feel that Molly being
primarily a support master also needs a +1 casting action. And Instinctual is
really there just to make sure Molly can cry each turn (see below).

·Pitiful - very handy

·Necrotic Spray – Deals 1wd to each living model within 1” when Molly
takes damage. Limited use, but try not to forget about it when you do face a
Living crew.

·Uncontrolled crying - 0 action - unless Molly is well out of harms reach
she should always be crying at the end of each of her activations to ensure
Pitiful is active.

·Whispered Secrets – 0 action Spell that copies a 1 cost spell from the
target, for Molly to use once. I’ve cast this plenty of times now on her own
crew, taking abilities such as Lure (though Rotten Belles cast it easier than
Molly), Acid Breath and Shriek. I’m thinking this could be the ability that’s
key to unlocking Molly’s potential, and I’m going to start looking for combos
that can come from enemy models.

·Imbue Vigour – 1 action spell that grants the target +3wk. This is the
one useful ability that Molly can try to cast when facing non-living and
‘immune to influence’ crews, it does require 7Masks or greater, which
unfortunately reduces its reliability somewhat. If you get the right cards in
hand (7+ and 9+ of masks) this combos very well with ‘Madam Sybelles’ ‘Call
Belle’, in practice getting both those cards and not wanting them for
other things (Croolligans or sever damage) is rare.

·Philosophy of uncertainty - 1 action spell that requires the caster to
sacrifice, in order to kill a non-master model within 3” also requires a WP
resist. This combos nicely with ‘Necrotic machine’, although I find it fairly
hard to keep the ‘Necrotic Machine’ alive whilst getting into range, once you
have the high crow required to cast it.

·Molly’s other spells include ‘Terrible Secret’, a very functional double
negative defence and attack debuff and ‘The Shocking Truth’, a short range
damage spell that can paralyse on the severe damage. Of those I actually find
the debuff the better option as it can cripple even the best of enemies
including Von Shill.

Molly also produces ‘Extraordinary Dead’
a 4” aura that gives Belles and Horrors +2wk whilst in the auras range.

Crew.

As mentioned above Molly and Sybelle
make a very good pair when it comes to movement tricks, although because both
of the movement spells require either a 7 or 9 of masks, making any movement
based plans unreliable, but handy if you do draw the right cards. I think the
best bet is just to stick to using Molly’s +3wk buff along with the +2wk aura
which if given to a ‘Rogue Necromancy’ or ‘Dead Doxy’ will give an initial walk
of 10, followed by a second walk of 8 (no longer getting the aura buff).

Crooligans I’ve had a fairly mixed bag
of results with. By having their key spell ‘The Mist’ a 1 action spell that
requires 8+, the Crooligans suffer badly, because without it they are fairly weak and
slow. Also worth noting is that ‘The Mist’ only has a 3” range unlike ‘The
Fogs’ 5” (created by ‘Stitched Together’), so the Crooligans can still be
targeted by ranged attacks. Having said that, when they perform, they do so
fairly well moving around the board and sitting on objectives.

Rotting Belles are your bread and butter
minion in this crew and luckily they are a good investment for 4SS each, the
only drawback being their low damage output. I’ve learned that unlike a Seamus
lead crew, you don’t have the same hitting power, so positioning and correct
use of ‘Lure’ is going to be even more key to successful use within a Molly
crew.

Lastly I’m just going to mention the
‘Grave Spirit’ totem, which I actually don’t own yet, but was lucky enough to
borrow once and to me is looking like a fairly good choice to include for 1SS
instead of the 2SS ‘Necrotic Machine’, as it can be used effectively by giving
armour +2 to either Molly, Sybelle or the ‘Rogue Necromancy’.

Overview

Molly on first glance appears to have a
good bunch of spells and abilities, however when it comes to actually using her
to lead a crew then some of her flaws become more apparent. Because she is
primarily a support master she doesn’t really appear to do anything and I
suppose this is because the buffs and debuffs she provides are not significant
enough to affect the game at the same level you would expect for a Leader.

Her biggest issue is probably with the
lack of Living opponents and her complete inability to deal with ‘immune to
influence’, which completely negates her more offensive spells.

That being said Molly’s biggest draw is
her background story and the visual appeal of her crew, which is the main
reason I’m being so stubborn and sticking with Molly girl, despite getting a
beating every time she leads a crew onto the gaming table.

Hopefully through my own and Jon’s blog
we can perhaps unlock the hidden potential and work out some sound tactics for
Molly lead crews.

PS Must say after reading Jon’s first
report he seems to be off to a good start with a 6-2 win.